Super Mario Maker prompted years worth of requests for a similar The Legend of Zelda Maker, a game that would let fans create their very own temples and dungeons, and while Nintendo hasn't gotten around to it yet, we might not need the company to even bother. An indie dev's halfway there already.
One-man studio Ki3 Games just released a free demo for Temple Maker 64, which is exactly what the name suggests. On one hand, it's an intuitive and really easy-to-use level creation tool fit for making large, interconnected dungeons or short, sweet challenge rooms. On the other, it's a third-person adventure game so clearly reheating Ocarina of Time's nachos, only this time with fan-made spaces to untangle.
Temple Maker 64's demo currently has two modes: build or explore. The former gave me access to a pretty slim selection of toys to mess around with, but the actual controls are so simple that it doesn't actually take long to dream up and build functioning puzzles. Creating rooms is as easy as drawing boxes on a map, for instance, and you can then drag them about on said map to reorganize dungeons quickly.
Of course, the latter then had me scrolling through a decent selection of player-made temples that already exist, forcing me to use bombs to get through clearly sus walls and stun a bunch of blobby monsters with a boomerang.
Some try to fully recreate dungeons you probably already know and love, some remix familiar ideas into all new spaces, and one was simply titled, 'Remember that one Super Monkey level?' It forced me to painfully walk along the topside of a very, very narrow fence.
As a proof of concept, Temple Maker 64's demo works brilliantly. Current fan-made temples might be a bit too familiar to be exciting right now – a lot of them repeat lock-and-key puzzles I've seen before – but that's due to change as the full game increases the number of gear and enemies and platforms and cosmetics and interactables available to builders.
Temple Maker 64's Steam page calls it "an N64-inspired love letter." And with its polygonal charms and Link-imitating controls, I couldn't disagree. There's no release date so far, but a Kickstarter page is set to go live at some point in the future.
